Multi-device Automation Testing for the Retail Industry

Gone are those days when one had to step outdoors to shop or visit a nearest bank to make a transaction, courtesy the internet. Many retail service providers have empowered their customers with a cozy shopping or banking experience through their attractive websites and mobile apps. As customers have the luxury of a subdued online experience, not many of them would know that a bunch of grueling testing activities take place to give them that luxury.

Testing complexity is directly proportional to the user friendliness and the rich experience of the retail application. Retail websites and apps have always been dynamic prone to branching which leads to lot of test scenarios, making test maintenance a challenging and complex task. Testing all these scenarios in multi-browser is again a task of its own.

Testing multi-devices is all about using the right mix of emulators and physical devices. Physical device testing leads to beta testing which gives different perspective to real-world testers, actual networks, real devices and a wider geographic coverage. Beta testing is a major area where emulators fail in comparison to physical devices due to testing the network density, how the app behaves in different devices and use of multiple networks.

And here’s where test automation comes neat and handy.

Setting up the test automation suite is a one-time investment process. A Robust framework which would append to all future challenges is all it takes for tests to have a longer run. This would ideally be the best approach to domain.

The following traits of test automation influences retail testing in the following ways:

1.Reduced manual labor

The Test suite could be really complicated with the number of permutations and combinations involved in creating it, making manual testing impossible. A robust framework that could work on multiple devices, making sure of constant checks throughout the application at various stages is necessary. Test automation has the capabilities to cover a wide range of testing which could comprise of validation of UI changes, sanity checks, and functional checks and so on. This reduces the manual effort and optimizes efforts used for retesting.

2.Detect defects precisely and efficiently

When you have a wide range of test data sets, test automation is the most efficient and convenient form of testing large chunks of data in several combinations. This helps us in validating all kinds of data sets across multiple browsers capturing defects at the earliest.

3.Cross platform testing

Combinational testing has always remained a challenge in the Retail domain. The possibilities of error due to behavior changes in application across multiple devices have always been a task to validate. Using test automation validation of multi browser/devices has been made simple, and with a comprehensive test suite expansion across various platforms is possible.

4.Comprehensive regression suite

Regression and Sanity/Smoke test could be made simple using test automation. An E2E suite which could cater to the applications quick execution in form of regression or sanity is very much desirable. Being very volatile and dynamic in nature, the Retail industry is always prone to constant changes and transition. A quick and effective round of testing can be achieved by testers to capture these changes in form of Sanity checks when the application is applied to different changes.

Mobile device fragmentation where QA has to check if the application works as per the requirement in various devices, various OS has been a real pain point in Multi-device testing. The diversity of applications with different capabilities has made testing quite a challenge for multiple -devices operating in multiple platforms.

Automation is arguably the best answer to the ever increasing faster to market time demands against the reduced cost of quality. It’s advised to include in your application testing strategy both manual and automation testing to keep the application intact. Manual checks are as important as Automation and cannot be skipped since some scenarios would be included where emulators would be of less help and manual intervention is needed. Automation comes handy when scale and frequency of regression testing is very high and we cover basic functionality across different browsers/device combination.

Automation not only ensures lesser time to delivery but also gives a better possibility of wise resource allocation and management. It also has the ability to foresee the scalability of the test application and can replicate the load and stress levels that applications can go through, thus enabling business to avoid any production level damages.

Retail has always been a dynamic market where new features, frequent releases and quality of the product need to be intact across multiple platforms. Having the right QA partner with an appropriate plan and implementation approach for multi-device testing will help ensure consistency across devices/browsers. This wouldn’t be possible without a QA partner with rich experience and expertise in various areas of testing. Having worked with multiple Fortune 500 companies, Aspire has empowered their customers with greater automation capabilities for seamless scaling of their applications for the future in both Mobile and Web applications.

Naveen Srinivasan works as Senior Consultant at Aspire Systems who majorly practices in Retail domain. Predominately providing Testing solution to clients he comes with wide range of knowledge across different area of retail including ecommerce, Warehouse Management, Order Management System and Oracle Suite.

Aspire Systems is a global technology services firm serving as a trusted technology partner for our customers. We work with some of the world's most innovative enterprises and independent software vendors, helping them leverage technology and outsourcing in our specific areas of expertise. Our services include Product Engineering, Enterprise Transformation, Independent Testing Services and IT Infrastructure Support services. Visit www.aspiresys.com for more information.